A fantastic omnichannel experience should be your first focus if you sell products both online and in-person. Both an omni-channel and POS loyalty programme are excellent for increasing sales and retaining clients since they let you provide interaction at every point of contact.
As an Onboarding Director, I frequently observe clients’ difficulties in providing a real-time loyalty experience in their physical locations. The easiest way to deal with this issue may be to find the level of POS integration that best suits your business.
To begin with…
I’d want to start off by introducing the term POI (Point Of Interaction), which is a little less perplexing than the phrase “customer,” which we overuse in the corporate world. In other words, a POI is a digital gate that connects the customer to the loyalty programme.
POI examples include:
a web browser on a laptop
a smartphone or tablet with a native app or a web browser
Each of them has a unique feature set; users can use the first two to read digital information, engage in social media interaction, and take quizzes, while the POS is mostly used for transactional purchases.
No matter whatever kind of POI a client uses, the objective is to offer them the same loyalty advantages. Customers must be able to accumulate and spend points during purchases made at both your online and physical stores.
Once you’ve done that, all POIs can communicate with your loyalty programme. YAY! This sounds amazing, but sadly it is insufficient.
An effective multichannel system is what you’ve created in this first step.
Although your programme can now offer a variety of ways to earn and spend points, you are still a long way from having the centralised point balance required for an omnichannel programme.
Level 0: Pushing data
The data transfer from the POS to the loyalty platform is one way. It’s similar to a monologue in that only one side can speak, the other party can understand but not respond, and there are only statements and no questions.
Customers may accrue points with each purchase, so even though it’s rather straightforward, it does have advantages. The POS only sends the user ID from the loyalty pass and all the transactional information to the loyalty platform.
This solution is excellent if you want a simple approach to support your campaigns and volume- or discount-based incentives.
Level 1: Push and pull of data
This is a two-way data flow, as you would have anticipated, but the POS is still the source of the communication.
When a Level 1 POS integration is used, the POS can enable communication with the loyalty platform by sending data and performing queries on it, however the loyalty platform is unable to do the same. This indicates that the POS may request access to the customer’s information while they are paying at the register.
So what is the use of this? In that case, you are already in a terrific position. Just like at Level 0, your customers can earn points, and both the POS and the loyalty platform can respond to a request to query the point balance.
Spending points is made feasible thanks to this information, which the POS uses to alert the loyalty platform that it would be deducting points from the balance.
Two-way push and pull at level 2
What else is missing after seeing all the essential components? Certainly the two-way link, which may be initiated by either person.
Imagine a fully functional user interface in the POS where, following login, cashiers may view customers’ point balances, tiers, rewards, and any other available loyalty data. The loyalty platform will be able to push updated information to the POS system and establish a living link if the user’s loyalty history has changed.
The cashier will be able to, among other things:
Depending on the tier the customer is in, access current user information (both loyalty and non-loyalty related) and utilise it for clienteling. (This one is especially important if you can provide people who are at a higher level with a unique experience.) That’s what Recognition LoyaltyTM is all about.)
Redeem and utilise the customer’s discount code.
Conclusion
As you can see, building an integration requires more effort the more complex it is. Therefore, a corporation can add more complex features to the POS as it exerts more control over the source code.
Ask your current POS supplier for assistance in identifying the ideal solution for your business if you currently have one. If your POS vendor isn’t adaptable enough, our pals at PICO might be able to help you out a lot. If you’re looking for a new POS company, it may be a good idea to go with one that has a public API, like Epos Now’s, so you can create your own app.
Need to know more? Please let us know; if you need to reach me right away, give my name. I will be pleased to help you determine the degree of integration that your business requires.